#1 Norway: Solders not trained for this level of violence!
Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2006 4:25 pm
Aftenposten
You know I'm gonna have to say it. If your solders aren't trained and equipped enough to go toe to toe with a buch of tribals with AK-47s and RPGs, you're no longer a real military and you can't call yourselves solders. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. You are now a police force with delusions of grandeur. The quicker you admit it to yourself the less likeyhood you'll get hurt trying to play solder games.The Norwegian Defense has refused to comply with NATO's plans to move nearly 300 Norwegian troops to southern Afghanistan.
The Norwegian soldiers, many of them fresh from basic training, were in danger earlier this month of being sent from the relatively calm north to escalating conflicts with the Taliban in the south.
NATO wants to shift more force to fight the Taliban in the area and sketched out a draft order that would move Norway's Quick Reaction Force from the north to Kandahar in the troubled south. There it would relieve an allied watch force which in turn would join the fight against the Taliban.
Defense Department spokesman Kjetil Eide in Oslo said that NATO had sent an 'inquiry' and not an 'order'. Norway's vice-admiral Jan Reksten decided to exercise the right of members to veto ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) orders.
"This was an assignment not in keeping with the what the Norwegian soldiers were sent to Afghanistan to do," brigadier Gunnar Gustavsen, chief of staff at the Joint Defense operative headquarters, told Aftenposten.
According to Aftenposten's sources, the NATO plan would not have meant using Norwegian soldiers in combat operations.
Norway has made it clear that its forces in Afghanistan are not sufficiently trained to take part in combat and not properly equipped to do so either.